Identification is a mechanism to protect against an internal aggressor

Anna Freud, investigating the aggressive attraction, came to the conclusion that libido and aggression have one and the same source - the unconscious person, and also develop according to the same laws. The stages of development of an aggressive drive are the same as in the development of a libidinal drive, and they have similar protective mechanisms, Are closely related. But aggressive attraction has some kind of protective mechanisms: delegation and identification with the aggressor.

On the example of work with children Anna Freud considers several options for the formation of psychological defense - identification with the aggressor:

1) The child can be identified with the aggressive behavior of the person he is afraid of. In this case, identification is an assimilation to another person through his facial expressions, actions, the image of emotions. So, a child who, according to the teacher, "made faces" during the lessons, just repeated his facial expressions, which became noticeable to the psychoanalyst from the side.

2) To overcome fear, children can independently come up with ways to protect themselves from it by repeating the illusory actions of a possible aggressor. A girl who was afraid of ghosts, which in her opinion were in a dark corridor, passed through this space to overcome this space, waving her hands, as a ghost could do. In such situations, identification is a change of roles, when a child gets into the position of an intimidating object and becomes an aggressor himself.

3) Often children are identified not with an external object, but with the force of its aggression. Faced with a physical education teacher's fist, the pupil came to school the next day with different types of weapons, i.e. Attempted to join his strength, strength, masculinity. In fact, the teacher did not show aggression, did not seek to punish the child, and the baby manifested not so much aggression as the ways to protect against all possible aggressive actions of strong men. In such situations, identification is the manifestation of the child's emerging Super-I, when the student does not manifest aggression, but finds a way to prevent it in the future as a means of protection. In addition to acquiring weapons, such a child can begin to play sports, strengthening his muscular strength.

4) In active games, children often portray aggressors, training their attraction, although no aggressive actions by adults or peers have been made against them. In an aggressive game, identification is a kind of training of aggressive attraction, when an internal aggressor can acquire the appearance of a warrior, monster or terminator.

Identification with the aggressor is a normal process of regulating one's drive, which can be trained through fantasy, games, and sports. In an asocial environment, children use their aggression to identify with a group of other aggressors in order to be in their own group, part of a common aggressive force. Identification in the family occurs in the child with significant people, with their qualities of character, i.e. Identification of a person is a process of the child's development, initiation to other people, regardless of the attraction with which identification is taking place: aggressive or libidinal.

The power of aggressive attraction increases as long as it is forbidden, until the child is able to control it, not familiar with its strength and power. An aggressive criminal can be a child who was strictly forbidden to manifest aggression, as well as someone who showed it uncontrollably and constantly. Forensic identification, i.e. The definition of a criminal by fingerprint, voice or other characteristics in the aggregate only stops him, but does not help to solve the problem of his aggression. Psychological and pedagogical work with the internal aggressor, which is constantly "torn" to prove itself, must be done from early childhood, training drive, controlling and managing it.